[1] Shoreline location and incident wave energy, observed for almost 5 years at Torrey Pines beach, show seasonal fluctuations characteristic of southern California beaches. The shoreline location, defined as the cross-shore position of the mean sea level contour, retreats by almost 40 m in response to energetic winter waves and gradually recovers during low-energy summer waves. Hourly estimates of incident wave energy and weekly to monthly surveys of the shoreline location are used to develop and calibrate an equilibrium-type shoreline change model. By hypothesis, the shoreline change rate depends on both the wave energy and the wave energy disequilibrium with the shoreline location. Using calibrated values of four model free parameters, observed and modeled shoreline location are well correlated at Torrey Pines and two additional survey sites. Model free parameters can be estimated with as little as 2 years of monthly observations or with about 5 years of ideally timed, biannual observations. Wave energy time series used to calibrate and test the model must resolve individual storms, and model performance is substantially degraded by using weekly to monthly averaged wave energy. Variations of free parameter values between sites may be associated with variations in sand grain size, sediment availability, and other factors. The model successfully reproduces shoreline location for time periods not used in tuning and can be used to predict beach response to past or hypothetical future wave climates. However, the model will fail when neglected geologic factors are important (e.g., underlying bedrock limits erosion or sand availability limits accretion).

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[1] Ground motions atop a southern California, USA coastal cliff are compared with water level fluctuations observed at the cliff base, and with ground motions observed 10 km inland. At high tide, cliff top ground motions in three frequency bands were generated locally by ocean waves at the cliff base: (1) high-frequency (>0.3 Hz) "shaking" caused by waves impacting the cliff, and (2) gravitational loading-induced "swaying" at the frequency of the incident sea swell waves (0.05-0.1 Hz), and (3) slow "swaying" at infragravity frequencies (0.006-0.05 Hz). At high tide, at infragravity and incident sea swell wave frequencies, cliff top vertical ground displacement and cliff base water level fluctuations are coherent and oscillate in phase (with occasional deviation at sea swell frequencies), and spectral levels at the cliff top are much higher than at the inland seismometer. In contrast, at "double frequencies" (0.1-0.3 Hz) spectral levels of vertical motions are nearly identical inland and at the cliff top, consistent with a common (distant or spatially distributed) source. At low tide, when ocean waves did not reach the cliff base, power levels of vertical ground motions at the cliff top decreased to inland levels at incident wave frequencies and higher, and only infragravity-band motions were noticeably forced by local ocean waves.

Two models, a spectral refraction model (Longuet-Higgins) and a parabolic equation method (PEM) refraction-diffraction model (Kirby), are used to simulate the propagation of surface gravity waves across the Southern California Bight. The Bight contains numerous offshore islands and shoals and is significantly larger (~ 300 km by 300 km) than regions typically studied with these models. The effects of complex bathymetry on the transformation of incident wave directional spectra, So (f,00), which are very narrow in both frequency and direction are difficult to model accurately. As So(f, Oo) becomes broader in both dimensions, agreement between the models improves and the spectra predicted at coastal sites become less sensitive to errors in the bathymetry grid, to tidal changes in the mean water depth, and to uncertainty in So (f,0o) itself. The smoothing associated with even relatively narrow (0.01 Hz-5 ° bandwidth) So(f, Oo) is usually sufficient to bring the model predictions of shallow water energy into at least qualitative agreement. However, neither model is accurate at highly sheltered sites. The importance of diffraction degrades the predictions of the refraction model, and a positive bias [O(10%) of the deep ocean energy] in the refraction-diffraction model estimates, believed to stem from numerical "noise" (Kirby), may be comparable to the low wave energy. The best agreement between the predicted spectra generally occurs at moderately exposed locations in deeper waters within the Bight, away from shallow water diffractive effects and in the far-field of the islands. In these cases, the differences between the models are small, comparable to the errors caused by tidal fluctuations in water depth as waves propagate across the Bight. The accuracy of predicted energies at these sites is likely to be limited by the uncertainty in specifying So(fOoL

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A four-year time series of nine airborne LiDAR surveys were used to assess the roles of wave attack and rainfall on the erosion of 42 km of southern California seacliffs. Nine continuous seacliff sections, separated by coastal lagoon mouths, all show maximum seacliff erosion in the rainiest time period (when wave energy was not particularly elevated), and in most sections the squared correlations between rainfall and erosion time series exceeded 0.8. Although rain and associated subaerial mechanisms such as groundwater seepage triggered most of the observed seacliff failures, wave attack accelerated seacliff erosion, with erosion rates of cliffs exposed to wave attack five times higher than at adjacent cliffs not exposed to waves. The results demonstrate the importance of both waves and rain in the erosion of southern California seacliffs and suggest that the combined influences of marine and subaerial processes accelerate the erosion rate through positive feedbacks.